Diana Lockwood - The Surviving Twin: A Memoir of Aspergers, Anorexia and Loss

Dear Anorexia,

Let me go. Julia is dead and your false promises and lies contributed to that. You said youd keep us safe, make us pretty, give us friends. You are a flake and a liar. You have taken my twin and you need to die. Meet me for a duel, you bitch, and I swear Ill draw first.

Fuck you,

Diana

I wrote my goodbye letter to Anorexia as an assignment at the eating disorder clinic where Id spent six months of my life.

At the clinic, Id celebrated Christmas of 2016 stitching lavender scented sachets in art therapy, and I was still there on the Fourth of July 2017, at which time I announced my independence from therapists and psychiatrists who had little to offer me beyond sticky blue Thinking Putty for stress relief.

Violently ramming my fists into putty only lit fires inside me to turn my rage inward, to destroy myself. Just like Julia. We both tried to die, only Julia succeeded. I guess Daddy succeeded, too, the year before. After punching putty long enough, Id be in tears, sorry for myself, the well-meaning clinic staff, and, most of all, Julia. We shared a common goal, and we had all failed to reach it: to kill the entity who had been Julias and my constant companion and triplet for over a decade.

Julia and I used to call our evil triplet Aspergers. She gave our life loneliness and obsessive, rigid behavior in daily routines and food. We renamed her Anorexia, the strongest manifestation of the mental illnesses that shaped us and our family. Julia reclassified Anorexia not as a person, but a religionthe only one we ever followed whole-heartedly.

Anorexia murdered that one Diana/Julia girl, as a childhood friend often called us. Girls who spoke in terms we instead of I. Girls who forgot whose memory was whose because in their minds they were interchangeable. Girls who could make each other laugh with a swift, knowing glance or a whispered allusion only we could understand about a favorite memory, film, or song.

I wrote my letter to Anorexia in a moment of confidence when I kidded myself into believing I could be what Daddy said he was in a past life: a Celtic warrior. But my mission, like almost everything in my life, wasnt a straight path paved with neat mosaic tiles. It was a walk down the weedy Crooked Mile, the Haunted Forest version of the yellow brick road at Fairytale Town, a park where Daddy took us as kindergarteners. My mission isnt whole yet. It lies in disparate, broken tiles, several still missing. Now, one will always be missing: my Julia.

My Julia, with her Tom Petty bangs and ashy blonde hair to rival Chers in length. My Julia, with her talent for mimicry of Valley girls, surfer dudes, or Wayne and Garth. My Julia, with a tiny wrinkle on her cheek when she smiled that she hated because it made her feel old, the little girl who dressed like Stevie Nicks and begged for her first lipstick at age seven. My Julia, who idolized Tom Sawyer and dreamed of being free bootin enough to play in the mud or swim in the river and not worry about the mess. My Julia, with her surprise gifts for the family: homemade cookies for Daddy, a special piece of dark chocolate for Mamma and, for me, shed leave a picture of our latest crush (usually an antiquated heartthrobJim Morrison, James Dean, George Harrison) with an autograph on it shed scrawled herself. Id ask her how it got there, and shed say, Oh, his spirit must have left it. My Julia, her voice, soft and sweet like Dorothy Gales when at her most earnest, low and ironic like Daria Morgendorffer when at her most wry and silly. I heard that studies have shown that voices are the first things one forgets after a person dies. I still hear my Julia.

If I can put enough of my broken tiles together, I can stand back and see a mosaic in the form of my twin and I as we once were. I see Julia dressed in her shade of sky blue, me in my shell pink, our hands touching just enough to show we loved each other without being cheesy about it. Id see that one Diana/Julia girl as she once wasbefore she let Anorexia in.

Eight years before she died, Julia and I started our shared memoir. She joked that it would be like Dudleys World . This fictional book was a study of Dudley, a geeky boy with a bizarre host of symptoms who Bill Murray observes and writes about in our favorite comedy movie, The Royal Tenenbaums .

Julia and I compared our pasts, searching for discrepancies and eventually agreeing on what really happened or, in some cases, agreeing to disagree on what really happened. Julia penned her memories to me as if they were elaborate letters like Mamma and her penpal from Russia exchanged, before correspondence morphed from inky sheafs of paper one could revisit like old friends to impermanent, impersonal emails. At times, Julia put into words what I could not articulate in the same way. Hers were far more reflective, foreboding, cautionary.

Intimate correspondence was typical of Julia. Since birth, she had been more open and affectionate. I wrote my memories in the third person, keeping myself and everyone else in my stories at a distance in the way only an omniscient narrator can. Later I changed my memories to first person, allowing myself a closeness I wished Id had when Julia and Daddy were still alive.

In putting together what Julia and I had started of our memoir, I vowed to myself to keep as much of my sisters voice as possible. This book is a continuation of our Dudleys World , based partly on of Julias diaries and my own writinga completion of what my twin and I started together and I must finish alone.